It is strange, and sadly strange, that, although Dr. Wright and his men had borne bravely up, throughout the livelong night of the dreary Antarctic continent, as soon as day returned, revealing blue and ghastly faces, sickness came.
This is no place in which to inquire into the cause of this sickness; suffice it to say that it came, and the men, hitherto brave and hearty, began to droop and shiver.
An optimist at most times, and ever ready to look upon the bright side of circumstances, the doctor himself began now to fear the worst.
Long before my own experiences of Arctic life, there used to be in Polar regions a disease called the black death.
Whether or not the illness that now attacked this little camp of heroes was a species of that ailment, I am not prepared to say.
I hate to have too much gloom in my stories, or I could describe the symptoms so graphically that you would shudder.
Suffice it to know that, though there were no unsightly swellings, and though the faces of the sufferers retained even their complacency when fits of shivering and cramp abated, they were melancholy and sad sights until they either recovered or died.
Let me say at once that though both Charlie and Walter were ill a few days, owing to the resiliency of youth they were not stricken down, and speedily recovered so far as to be able to assist the truly sick.
It need not be said that Dr. Wright did all that any medical man could have done. Just one or two of the Eskimos collapsed utterly, and died on the third day. They were buried not far off in the snow. Two days after a sailor followed them to the snow-field. He did not say much, even at the worst, and finally he simply fell asleep. Only one out of the four other men attacked recovered, and this was far more from good management and the kindly nursing of Sheelah and Taffy than from medicine. In fact, though wine did good when the patient was at the lowest ebb, and helped him to fight his way round the corner to restoration, medicine was for the most part useless.
Curtis was early down, and, strangely enough, considering how truly brave he was, his spirits drooped to zero, and he gave up hope of himself from the first.